Hundreds of workers fired without warning – Is AI taking human jobs?

Google’s parent company Alphabet laid off more than 200 contract workers in at least two phases last month who were working to improve AI products like the Gemini chatbot. According to employees who spoke to WIRED, the layoffs happened without warning and come amid ongoing protests over pay and working conditions.

Over the past few years, Google has outsourced its AI rating to thousands of contract workers from Hitachi-owned GlobalLogic and other outsourcing companies. These workers, mostly based in the US, work on English content.

They evaluate, operate and rewrite chatbot responses to improve Google’s AI products, like AI overviews (AI-generated summaries in Search). These workers use their expertise and skills to teach AI to give correct answers on a variety of topics.

Layoffs and protests

Employees say these layoffs happened amid an attempt to suppress protests over issues such as their salaries and job insecurity. Many of these employees needed a master’s degree or PhD to join the “Super Rater” program. These included writers, teachers and people from creative fields.

Employees’ concerns

The remaining employees in the company are worried that they are training themselves to be replaced by AI. WIRED wrote in its report that GlobalLogic is using these employees to train Google’s AI system to automatically evaluate answers, with the aim of replacing them with AI.